'Cruel' Trump move to shake Aussies' trust in US

Perth Now

2 days ago

Australians are going to 'see the cruelty' in Donald Trump's bill, says an ex-staffer to Joe Biden. (Lukas Coch/AAP PHOTOS)
Australians are going to 'see the cruelty' in Donald Trump's bill, says an ex-staffer to Joe Biden. (Lukas Coch/AAP PHOTOS) Credit: AAP
Increasingly US-sceptic Australians might further question their nation's ties to the superpower as the impacts of Donald Trump's signature bill sweep through vulnerable communities.
The US president's One Big Beautiful Bill Act cleared Congress on Friday, Australian time, enshrining significant cuts to health programs while funding income tax breaks and adding trillions of dollars to debt.
America's wealthiest will benefit most from the bill while almost 12 million low-income Americans would be left uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and many could see their pay drop due to safety-net cuts.
While the bill did not directly impact Australians, it would affect their perceptions of the US, according to Cory Alpert, an ex-staffer to former president Joe Biden.
"This bill is going to hurt a lot of marginalised people," the Melbourne University researcher told AAP.
"Australians are going to look at this and see the cruelty in it, and I think it's going to further drive this conversation about how close Australia is to the United States.
"Where do Australians belong in the global conversation: as a floating aircraft carrier in the south Pacific, or as a more independent nation? How aligned do you want to be with Trump's America?"
While Australia has positioned itself as a key US ally, cracks have also begun to show in the relationship.
When asked recently if the US remained a reliable partner under Mr Trump's leadership, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia understood he had a "different view of how America is to be in the world".
Australians' trust in the United States has already dropped by 20 points since 2024, hitting a new low with just 36 per cent of the public expressing any level of trust according to an April poll published by the Lowy Institute.
In a speech to be delivered on Saturday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will reassert Australia's independence in foreign policy while dismissing Trump-style isolationist policies.
"Choosing our own way doesn't mean going it alone," he will tell an audience in Sydney to mark the 80th anniversary of the death of former Labor prime minister John Curtin.
"Australia did not just join the institutions which created the international rules based order, we helped shape them."
The prime minister will draw comparisons between himself and the ex-wartime leader, saying Curtin did not just look to the US but spoke for Australia.
The government has already rebuffed calls from Washington to dramatically increase its defence spending by tens of billions of dollars a year.
Many analysts believe the Labor government's landslide election win in May was at least partly fuelled by voters' growing discomfort with the US president at a time when some of the coalition's talking points echoed Mr Trump's platforms.
"(Australians) don't want to live in a country that espouses those same types of cruelties," Mr Alpert said.
The size of Mr Albanese's victory meant he did not face significant pressure to shift his position towards the US president.
But Mr Alpert said he would not be surprised if the government publicly supports some aspects of Mr Trump's latest measures, especially as it tries to negotiate an exemption from US tariffs.
"We've already seen examples of that in Australia where leaders are trying to come up with positions where they can go to Trump and say, 'look, we're supporting your position, you should give us a better deal'," he said, pointing to Labor's decision to support US strikes on Iran.
"That is probably the more dangerous aspect."